Research firm Strategy Analytics has released a new report which compares the three leading mobile development environments: Apple's Xcode, Google's Android Studio and Microsoft's Visual Studio. "Apple's Xcode beats Android on all measures on which it was evaluated," Strategy Analytics said. "Microsoft also offers a strong showing, perhaps providing it with an opportunity to better court developers to the Windows platform. Developer tools are an important component of platform support and Apple’s end to end system for app development to distribution is the reason the platform boasts some of the most advanced applications."

The report gave Xcode a score of 22, Visual Studio a 21 and Android Studio a 13. According to the report, "The discrepancy in gaming capabilities is a major reason why Xcode is rated above the other developer environments. Conversely, Visual Studio, the most mature product, closes the gap as it is the only environment which can be used to code for multiple platforms and also the strength of its editing and testing suite."